Professor Yildiz will discuss her award-winning book, "Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition," in which she proposes that monolingualism is more than just a simple numerical term and instead constitutes the heart of a major modern paradigm that has sought to shape individuals, communities, disciplines, and institutions of its image. The wide-ranging effects of this paradigm have been particularly felt by minorities and immigrants who do not easily fit into it. Focusing on German-Jewish and Turkish-German writers and thinkers, from Franz Kafka to Feridun Zaimoglu, her talk will trace the powerful impact of this paradigm and subtle resistance and creative responses to it. "Beyond the Mother Tongue" (Fordham University Press) recently received the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures, from the Modern Language Association of America.